Telangana IT minister Sridhar Babu bets big on AI ‘to improve quality of life’

Telangana’s information technology minister Duddilla Sridhar Babu is clear — he does not want the state to miss the artificial intelligence (AI) bus even as the public discourse around the technology might be more dominated by hype or substance, especially if AI can be used to improve the lives of common citizens, and increase governance efficiency and productivity.
“Basically, as a government policy maker, I want to use AI for betterment of the life of citizen of a state first. Quality of life has to be improved. That is the fundamental principle. Second thing is the delivery of services from the government. State productivity and efficiency has to be increased. How well can we use AI and increase the pace of the deliverables, increase the efficiency, increase the productivity? Because we, both as a country and Telangana as a state, are a welfare state. So we believe in the welfare, utilitarian state… For example, if I am extending any pension or any loan or a student scholarship, how can we bring in productivity and efficiency in delivering those to the right people?” Babu said in a conversation with HT during a visit to New Delhi last week.
To that end, Babu is also looking to make Hyderabad an AI city, and invite private companies to invest in the state. The first on his list are pharmaceutical companies. “Telangana is home to a third of the global production of pharmaceuticals. As a policymaker, I have to see if these companies can use AI to produce what they do at a lower cost. That will be helpful for the common man, the poor man… That is our ultimate objective. And in terms of productivity and efficiency, if by using fewer resources, they [the industry] can get the best of pharma products, that can be helpful for the industry,” he said.
AI has already made its mark in the field of drug discovery. Last week, the 2024 Nobel for Chemistry was awarded to two Google DeepMind scientists, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis, for developing AlphaFold, an AI tool that can predict protein structures, and complement existing experiments to develop new vaccines. The third recipient, David Baker of the University of Washington, got it for his work on computation of protein design.
Babu wants to use AI in nine core verticals in the state, including agriculture, education, industry, healthcare, rural administration, urban administration and home department/security.
But there are concerns.
For instance, Economic Times reported on October 13 that hospitals, much like ride aggregator apps, are engaging in ‘surge pricing’ and unbundling medical services to maximise profits. Use of automated systems and AI can exacerbate that, potentially making healthcare unaffordable for people and discriminating against people from specific classes, castes, religions, and communities.
Babu says the state’s health minister and health secretary have already been “sensitised” on how to use AI. This “sensitisation”, he says, is about telling people what AI is, how it can be helpful, what are its pros and cons, and “how it can increase the efficiency and productivity in delivery of our systems”.
Babu wants to include this “sensitisation” within the state’s regulatory framework on AI, the drafting of which is still in initial stages, he said.
But Telangana is already relying on algorithmic decisionmaking for delivery of public services and in the process, excluding people. In 2016, Telangana’s previous government under BRS, started Samagra Vedika, an algorithmic system to consolidate citizens’ data from several government databases to create digital profiles of citizens. Al Jazeera reported in January that while this system was initially deployed by the state police to nab criminals, it is now being used by the state government to ascertain the eligibility for welfare schemes. And in the process, the algorithm is making mistakes and denying genuine claimants.
Babu, at an event organised by South First in Hyderabad a fortnight ago, said, “AI by itself cannot make mistakes. The mistakes occur at the data input stage. We have to ensure that there are no errors there.”
On asking about this, Babu reiterated his stance to HT. “AI’s raw material is data… If they have the data to be fed into the machines, the machines will process.”
What are the steps he is taking to ensure that correct data is fed into the system to ensure data hygiene? For that, he wants to rely on AI.
“Hygiene is about how you curate. That’s where I take the help of AI products. For example, so many products are going to market now and we are trying to extend an invitation to all the big players and trying to see if there are companies which can curate the data, get the hygiene [clean] data so that we will try to extract. This is only the initial beginning in terms of administration. How well I can really exploit [AI]?” he said.
Is he going to ensure that there are humans in the loop to oversee the results from AI? “Absolutely. Humans cannot be ignored because it is ultimately the human brain,” he said. He will also have “a human mechanism in the picture” to double check the algorithmic outputs.
AI relies on churning huge amounts of data whose collection arguably undermines a core privacy principle, data minimisation. Babu says that the state government is not looking to collect private data. “We will be taking, for example, data from the agriculture department. Over the past 70 years, what are the practices we have used for production, what are the schemes we have implemented? That is privy to our own department,” he said, indicating the kind of government data Babu wants to use AI for. The government is already using AI to help farmers use pesticides in the right way, he said.
For instance, Babu says that even in his own department, they have data for the last three to four decades “which has not been harnessed in the right way”. “If I say that I want to introduce a policy, my officers may refer to reports from the last five to 10 years and make a small note on it. If I feed data of the last 75 years into an AI model, I can really try to harness it and get the best of the results,” he said. Babu is working on integrating data from across the state’s 33 departments.
Another problem with collecting so much data is it is a security risk. In June, three of Telangana Police’s apps — HawkEye, TSCOP and Telangana Police SMS service portal — were hacked by a 20-year-old computer science student from Greater Noida who was later apprehended. The police subsequently conducted a security audit of all its websites and apps.
Babu said that no system is foolproof. “Tomorrow, if a great intelligent guy wants to use it [intelligence] in a negative way, they can hack anything… Hackers are hackers, whether they are doing ethical hacking or unethical hacking, it depends upon their perception, it depends on their thinking, on their idea of what to do with it,” he said.
But the risks should not stop the government from using AI, he said. “We can’t stop ourselves from harnessing it by thinking about the many problems of using AI…else, we will be out of the world,” he said.
Babu said the government will “definitely safeguard the privacy of the individuals and of institutions” as it tries to evolve a regulatory framework for ethical use of AI.
But Telangana does not have the best record when it comes to using technology. Telangana police have repeatedly been criticised for its ad hoc practices of randomly and indiscriminately collecting biometric data (including fingerprints and facial data) of people on the streets of Hyderabad.
In September, the Telangana high court issued notices to the state government over a PIL against the police’s ‘Mission Chabutra’ and ‘Operation Romeo’, which were intended to discourage youngsters, especially young men, from gathering at “chabutras” (scaffoldings) at night where, as per the police, they indulge in illegal and criminal activities.
In the PIL, the petitioner, social activist SQ Masood, argued that these operations were not backed by law and that these actions, including late night counselling sessions by law enforcement agencies, random searches of people and property, and public harassment violated Articles 14 (right to equality) and 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution.
Babu underplayed the concerns around discriminatory profiling and police’s role in it. “The police are friendly… They use the technology for the best.”
“We don’t want to intrude on someone’s privacy and try to profile few individuals as such but if there is a crime which related to one individual or two individuals, that profile has to be created to keep the society safe,” he said. But are there any safeguards to prevent abuse of technology by law enforcement agencies?
“Safety and security of citizens is more important to us. There, the profiling of individuals is not at all our prime concern. How do we ensure the safe and security of citizens, keeping it as the top priority, if in a particular area somebody has antecedents, history of crime and all? So then the police can be able to reach them fast, then technology can be used,” Babu said.
Babu agrees that AI has become a buzz word that every company is throwing around. He likened it to the Y2K phenomenon where private companies were trying to sell solutions. But he insists that he cannot wait for the froth and hype around AI to settle and for actual use cases to emerge else the state would fall behind.
“We can’t wait for the froth to settle down. We just want to start by knowing what is what. We would like to make our administration, make our governance [more effective] and know what is what, to take few early steps into that. And whatever the best use cases are there, try to implement it. And we will be AI ready. And if I think of it, the froth will never settle down. Every day, a new technology comes, a new software comes,” he said.
There is an urgency in Babu to ensure that the state does not miss on the opportunities presented by AI, even as the actual applications have not really materialised.
“No, I don’t want to miss the AI bus. Ultimately, the ethical use of AI will be our prime concern followed by the privacy of individuals and institutions, and third is the safety and security of our citizens as we harness AI. That is the ultimate objective,” he said.